Painful existence: Fallout from meningitis crisis continues

4:47 AM,
Apr. 2, 2013

Mark Klaserner of Milford, Mich., a patient at St. Joseph Mercy Hospital in Ann Arbor, Mich., talks about his ongoing battle with fungal meningitis. Last September, Klaserner and hundreds of other people across the country didn't know they were unwitting victims in an unfolding, unprecedented public health crisis.

Written by

Ann Zaniewski
Gannett

The pounding headaches started a few days before Mark Klaserner boarded a plane last fall for Colorado and worsened after he landed.

"They got so strong I decided my glasses needed to be replaced. I told my ex-wife I needed new glasses," the 57-year-old Milford man recalled.

It was late September. Back home in Michigan, people like 87-year-old Milda Mattila were starting to get sick and showing up at area hospitals with headaches, fevers and other symptoms of bacterial meningitis. But tests showed no bacteria in their spinal fluid. Doctors were baffled. ...